ryan.freebern.org

Nanoradio, a Swedish hardware manufacturer, has just announced a new low-power wifi chipset that is seriously tiny. I can’t find details on what “low-power” means, but if it’s low enough, maybe now the time is ripe for Yahoo (owners of Flickr) to partner with a digital camera company to make a small digital camera that lets you take photos and, when you wander in range of an open wifi network, immediately begins uploading them to your Flickr account. By integrating GPS, they could even be tagged with the location you took them. This would make documenting an event or trip quite simple for people who don’t want to have to deal with the whole transferring/uploading process. Live, streaming photography for the masses!

On January 5th, 2006, Disney filed a patent on a portable media player that would sense the user’s mood by testing their heart rate and body temperature, and use that to attempt to select appropriate music. Neat idea, right? Some friends and I had the same idea half a year ago, and discussed it on a public IRC server. The following conversation took place on July 30th, 2005. (Some unrelated bits of conversation have been removed for clarity.)

[07:30] <Ryan> Also, I had an idea for a mood-sensitive hardware mp3 player. To turn it on, you press your thumb on a temperature/heart-rate sensor, and then it plays songs and you tell it on a 1-5 scale how much you like that song at that time.
[07:37] <luser_> heh
[07:37] <luser_> i was thinking about a sort of mood-playlist generator
[07:37] <luser_> 1) get a bunch of data from somewhere about similarity of songs in your library
[07:37] <luser_> like same artist is similar, same album is very similar, same genre is similar, etc
[07:38] <luser_> 2) Start playing random songs
[07:38] <luser_> 3) If the user skips a song, lower that song’s score, and lower the scores of all songs connected to that song
[07:38] <luser_> 4) Try to pick a highly rated song for next in the list
[07:39] <luser_> assuming you can get useful similarity data, you should start to get similar songs pretty quickly
[07:39] <luser_> with very little user input
[07:40] <Ryan> You could use the Amazon API to find similar artists/albums.
[07:40] <luser_> ooh
[07:40] <luser_> that’d be hot
[07:40] <luser_> anyway, that’s mostly how we use the iPod in the car
[07:40] <luser_> put it on random, and skip stuff we don’t want to hear
[07:54] <Ryan> This will only really work if you can correlate it with mood somehow. Your algorithm didn’t actually take that into account.
[07:54] <luser_> eh
[07:54] <luser_> you determine the mood from what songs they skip
[07:55] <luser_> i’m looking for the lowest amount of user interaction
[07:55] <luser_> all you’re saying is basically “don’t play songs like that”
[07:55] <Ryan> Ah, I guess that works.
[07:57] <Ryan> I still like the idea of correlating it with body temperature and heart rate.
[08:02] <luser_> correlating with body temperature and heart rate would be crazy
[08:03] <luser_> the cool thing about my idea is that you could theoretically get a decent listening
experience out of a flash mp3 player with just “Play” and “Next Track” buttons
[13:21] <Vito`> luser…: just skipping songs you don’t like works if you already know the song.
[13:21] <Vito`> 1-5 rankings are dumb, should just be thumbs up/thumbs down
[13:21] <Vito`> but if it’s a lot of new music, I, at least, tend to listen to the entire track to at least give it a fair shake.
[13:22] <Vito`> but that’s me
[13:22] <Vito`> I like the idea of skipping a track to drop it in the ratings
[13:33] <luser_> i’m thinking where you already have a library of music
[13:33] <luser_> and you just want a playlist that fits your mood
[13:33] <Vito`> Yeah.
[13:33] <Vito`> No, I totally get it, just two buttons is great.
[13:33] <luser_> getting the data should be pretty easy

So does this count as prior art that could be used to challenge the Disney patent? I doubt it, but if anyone out there is a patent lawyer and wants to take on the case, be my guest. I’d love to see Disney get a little less money!

Gizmodo posts a brief review of a Fujitsu tablet PC which includes the following quote:

I like the tablet PC concept, but in real life they’re kind of glorified PDAs that are excellent for very specific apps and useless as an every day PC.

Uh, Gizmodo? Your prejudice is showing. Have you ever actually used a tablet PC as your everyday PC? I’ve had one since last November, and it’s incredibly useful. Much of the time I’m using it, it sits here on my desk just like any other non-tablet laptop, and works perfectly well as such. It’s not underpowered, not lacking in features or accessories, and the tablet functionality doesn’t detract from its usefulness in any way.

When I’m going on the road, or just feel creative, then I love to use it in tablet mode. It’s excellent for making artwork, very useful for making notations on ongoing projects (since I can scribble notes on an image by hand, the same I’d do with a printout but without requiring paper), and handy as a space-saver when I don’t have the room to set it up like a laptop.

The Fujitsu tablet PC that Gizmodo reviews appears to be a piece of overpriced junk, I admit; it’s tiny (only a 9-inch display), has a smallish hard drive and no optical drive, and costs three grand. But it’s not representative of all tablet PCs at all; my Toshiba tablet PC is full-sized, with a 15-inch display, a 60 gb hard drive, and a CD/DVD reader/writer drive for a total price less than 2/3rds the price of the Fujitsu.

In conclusion, Gizmodo, don’t diss the tablet PC unless you’ve really taken the time to use one. It’s perfectly useful as an everyday PC, and the tablet functionality is an excellent creative bonus that simplifies many everyday tasks.

Boing Boing: Big theater chains refuse to show Soderbergh’s “Bubble”

Soderbergh is taking a novel approach to distributing this movie, one that I’ve thought of in the past: he’s releasing it in theatres, on pay-per-view television, and on DVD all on the same day. His rationale is that movies are already hitting the internet the same day they hit theatres, so why not give people other options than illegally downloading it?

The movie theatres, understandably, are upset. They say giving people these options will decrease their profits. This is potentially true, and I’m curious to see how it goes.

However, occasionally I’ll see a movie in a theatre, and love it so much that I’d be willing to buy the DVD immediately, if it were available. If the movie theatres simply set up a DVD stand in their lobby where you could purchase the DVD of a movie you just saw, at a lower price than in a DVD store, by presenting your ticket stub, I bet lots of moviegoers would take advantage of it.

In any case, bravo to Soderbergh for attempting to tackle the movie-downloading problem through unconventional means. Instead of engaging in pointless lawsuits that have been proven to discourage nobody, this approach is productive and thoughtful, and could help to update the film industry’s business model to compete in today’s high-bandwidth world.

Edit: Mark Cuban, who owns Landmark Theaters (which is the only chain actually showing “Bubble”), agrees with me, but is a much more eloquent guy, so go read his post.

I use AudioScrobbler, a service provided by Last.fm that keeps track of what songs I listen to when. Even though I know anyone can observe my listening habits and judge me based on that, I don’t let it affect what I listen to. As you can see on my profile page, along with such inarguably fantastic music as Thievery Corporation, Zero 7, and The Ditty Bops, I’ve also got some remarkably cheesy artists like Neil Diamond and Mannheim Steamroller.

If you use AudioScrobbler, do you try and show off your good musical tastes and hide your poor ones? Or do you choose to not care, like me, and just listen to whatever strikes your fancy?

Sarah and I are planning a trip to Italy for the middle of the year, and as a result, I’ve been searching various travel websites for plane tickets on a regular basis, trying to get the cheapest and most convenient flights I can find. Every site I’ve used works nearly the same way, but they all suffer from similar little usability problems that could easily be improved.

1. Save my search details in a cookie.
   I keep going back to these sites and having to re-input all the flight details: airport codes, dates, number of passengers, etc. It wouldn’t be hard at all for the site designers to store this data in a cookie for me and let me recall my most recent searches with just a click. And I shouldn’t have to register an account on the site to do this.
2. Let me specify broader time ranges.
   Every site lets me choose an hour for my flights to depart. Some let me choose more vague time ranges like morning/noon/evening. But what I want to be able to specify is “10 a.m. or later,” and nobody lets me do this. Surely I’m not the only one who wants to specify a range like this.
3. Include nearby airports.
   Several of the sites have methods to include “nearby” airports in their searches. However, one of them doesn’t define “nearby,” and one limits that to “airports within 80 miles.” Why don’t I get to tell you what airports I consider nearby? Let me specify the search radius, or, better yet, show me a list of airports that I can check off.

Also, I won’t be using CheapTickets.com again.

Someday when I own a house, I’ll want a generator to provide emergency backup power in case the grid goes down for one reason or another. This page says, why spring for a slow-to-start old-fashioned generator when people like my wife and me who own Toyota Priuses or other hybrid vehicles can just hook them up as a generator? This is a really cool solution to an annoying problem. Props to the guy who thought it up.

My newest project, worksafer, has been released. Worksafer is a Firefox extension coupled with a web-accessible database that tries to help you avoid accidentally visiting “unsafe” websites from your work computer. If you click on a link that would normally take you to a site with objectionable content, such as a porn site or a site featuring a loud Flash movie, the worksafer extension will look up that site in its database, check to see if it appears unsafe based on the peoples’ votes, and if so, temporarily redirect you to a warning page. If you still want to see the site, you’ll have a ten-minute window in which to do so.

With the worksafer extension installed, if you come across a website with objectionable content that is not yet considered unsafe, you can submit a “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work) vote for that site. Conversely, if you come across a site marked NSFW and you feel it has been marked that way unfairly, you can submit a “SFW” vote. If enough people submit votes, a large percentage of unsafe sites will be stored in the database, and you’ll be more safe.

If you’re interested, you can download the worksafer extension and give it a try.

I’ve been reading Boing Boing, an excellent group-blog about technology, culture, free speech, and lots of other neat topics, for more than a year. I’ve also sent in a number of links that I found interesting, but they’ve never made it onto the blog.

Well, last night I managed to get something on there, because I know the difference between a loofah and a sea sponge. The poor loofah has certainly been maligned in the recent past; I wanted to make sure everyone knew that Hyperion just wouldn’t exfoliate with quite as much vigour as a real loofah.

Edit (01 Nov 2005: Oh yeah, I submitted the Lyttle Lytton contest link back in August, and they blogged about it. Stupid faulty memory!

LJ UserPopup is a GreaseMonkey script that creates a useful popup full of handy links whenever you move your mouse over a username link on a LiveJournal page. The popup contains links to the user’s journal, user info, user pics, journal archive, friends page, and memories.

Before installing this, make sure you have upgraded GreaseMonkey to version 0.5 Beta, which has numerous new security features in place. To install this script (if you have GreaseMonkey installed), right-click on this link and select ‘Install User Script…’.

The Free Software Foundation has put out a call for nominations for the 2005 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software. I sent this nomination in:

I would like to nominate Mark Shuttleworth for the 2005 FSF Award. Mark Shuttleworth is an adventurous and innovative entrepreneur whose intrepid spirit has led him as far as outer space, but whose vision remains grounded. Mr. Shuttleworth founded Thawte, a provider of digital security certificates, ten years ago, and made his fortune. Since then, he has used his business skills (and no small amount of cash) to fund many exciting open-source projects.

Mr. Shuttleworth recently founded Canonical, Ltd., the creators of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, now recognized as one of the simplest to setup and use GNU/Linux distributions available. He also created and provided initial funding for the Ubuntu Foundation to provide support to users of Ubuntu and development resources for the project itself.

He is heavily involved in helping create and disseminate free software for use in education. His SchoolTool project provides school administrators, teachers, and students with a powerful system to facilitate all facets of education. The Edubuntu version of Ubuntu is optimized for use by teachers and students in the classroom. Providing students with hands-on interaction with free software at an early age is key to their embracing it as they grow older. I believe Mr. Shuttleworth’s work in this area will help create a new generation of free software enthusiasts.

The Shuttleworth Foundation has set up 155 “tuXLabs” (educational computer centers in schools, completely running open-source software) throughout South Africa, in an effort to enhance the quality of education there. Additionally, the Foundation offers a large number of monetary bounties for various projects aimed at furthering various free software packages.

See the following sites for more information:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.schooltool.org/
http://www.edubuntu.org/
http://www.tuxlab.org.za/

ICANN is stupid. (Heck, the entire DNS is stupid, but that’s a rant for another time.) They’ve demonstrated their stupidity in the past by creating such widely-used and successful TLDs as .museum, .coop, .biz, and .aero. Today, working to make corporations richer (rather than make the internet better), they continue their terrible record by instituting the .mobi TLD, ostensibly for websites intended to be used by mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs.

As Gizmodo points out, this is stupid for one major reason: while typing “com” on a cellphone keypad requires 7 keypresses, typing “mobi” requires 9, and since the whole idea behind creating the .mobi TLD is to make mobile web-surfing easier, this is already going in the wrong direction. If there absolutely must be a TLD for mobile domains, why not mbl (6 keypresses) or even mb (3)?

Furthermore, the ability to create websites designed specifically for mobile devices is already present in the W3’s current HTML specification: site designers can use the link tag to indicate an alternate, mobile-specific version of a document, which handheld devices can then fetch and display:

<link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="mobile.html" />

Why isn’t ICANN creating TLDs that people would actually use? Why is there no .inc, .ltd, .llc, .film, .game, .book, .blog? ICANN needs to be stopped before the DNS becomes more of a giant mess than it already is.